Newzity

I guess money and greed took over. Google just hired Frank “the crook” Quattrone to advise them on Yahoo and Microsoft merger.

Legally, Google faces hurdles if they want to buy Yahoo. So they are trying to bend the rules and trying to find a loophole to do that. Why such big and profitable company like Google needs to do that? It is all about money and Microsoft. Microsoft is not only trying to get Yahoo, they are in talks with News Corporation that bought MySpace. Microsoft missed the search engine boat, and Google missed the social networking ship. That makes Google nervous about their future if Microsoft catches up on the social networking side. Yeah Google has Orkut, but Orkut is no MySpace or Facebook. That reminds me, Orkut started with stolen software. The possibility of Microsoft getting Yahoo and teaming up with MySpace is something that scares Google. So it is time to call up old buddy who knows a thing or two about bending the rules. Mr. Quattrone is an old buddy of Google CEO Eric Schmidt. No one is surprised that Mr. Schmidt called his friend for “expert” advice on how to go around the laws.

So what happened to Do No Evil principle? Well it is easy for a startup to come up with a catchy phrase, but really hard for a giant to live up to it. Maybe all these years we blamed Microsoft for nothing.

Shine, of course. The portal leader Yahoo has set its sight on women and started a site just for them: Shine.

Creativity and sense of venture come out of pressure. And Yahoo has been under lots of pressure these days: from revenue decline to talks of hostile take over. So Monday Yahoo ventured into something it never did for the past decade: launch a site targeting specific demographic. The first in line are the women of age group 25 to 54 who make all the decisions of running day to day life from buying grocery to decorating homes. They are a prime target for advertisers. Shine promises to be one-stop-shop for women. It offers topics such as Fashion & Beauty; Healthy Living; Entertainment; Parenting; Love & Sex; Work & Money; Food; At Home; and all important Astrology. It is in a blog format, so there is a Speak Up section too - finally someone gave women a voice. Of course, they are not the first one to think of women, and there are already sites like iVillage. The content for the Shine site will come from established media companies like Hearst Corporation, the publisher of household names such as Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and Redbook.

So may be this is the year of the women: a woman in the white house and a place to Shine online. What more can they ask for.